Fresh Time Machine Backup before Lion

[philipk]

I am getting ready to leave for the day and will set my iMac to do a fresh Time Machine backup, It will be a 167 Gig backup. My iTunes are on a external drive and all of my data files are on Dropbox.

I am getting ready to install Lion. Hopefully, it will be next week. If not, a couple of weeks of incremental backups with Time Machine will be fine.

I think my first try with Lion will be using it as an update with the backup as a safety precaution.

If that doesn't work to my liking, I will do a fresh install of Lion.

How many of you are prepping your machine for the big day?

 

[Fishrrman]

"I am getting ready to install Lion. Hopefully, it will be next week. If not, a couple of weeks of incremental backups with Time Machine will be fine.
I think my first try with Lion will be using it as an update with the backup as a safety precaution."

In my opinion, you would be MUCH BETTER OFF if you ditched the Time Machine backup, and used CarbonCopyCloner to create a BOOTABLE CLONE of your internal drive instead.

This way, if something went wrong with the upgrade, you would still have an exact bootable copy of what was on your main drive. I'm sure you know that you can't boot from a TM backup, right?

I also think you'd be better off to upgrade to Lion this way:
1. Create a bootable backup using CCC
2. TEST the backup to MAKE SURE that it does indeed boot your Mac
3. Have the Lion installer package on the backup, or on a DVD
4. Boot from your backup drive
5. Use Disk Utility to re-initialize your internal drive (and re-partition if need be)
6. Install a completely "fresh" copy of Lion onto your internal drive
7. When the installer asks if you have data to "migrate over", select your backup clone drive - the installer will bring over your accounts, apps, and other relevant data.
8. Now, boot from the new Lion OS, run Software Update.

Do it this way, and you'll have a fresh Lion installation _AND_ still have your exact previous Snow Leopard on the backup. You can experiment with Lion and make sure it's to your liking BEFORE you get rid of the old SL OS.

 

[baryon]

"I am getting ready to install Lion. Hopefully, it will be next week. If not, a couple of weeks of incremental backups with Time Machine will be fine.
I think my first try with Lion will be using it as an update with the backup as a safety precaution."

In my opinion, you would be MUCH BETTER OFF if you ditched the Time Machine backup, and used CarbonCopyCloner to create a BOOTABLE CLONE of your internal drive instead.

This way, if something went wrong with the upgrade, you would still have an exact bootable copy of what was on your main drive. I'm sure you know that you can't boot from a TM backup, right?

I also think you'd be better off to upgrade to Lion this way:
1. Create a bootable backup using CCC
2. TEST the backup to MAKE SURE that it does indeed boot your Mac
3. Have the Lion installer package on the backup, or on a DVD
4. Boot from your backup drive
5. Use Disk Utility to re-initialize your internal drive (and re-partition if need be)
6. Install a completely "fresh" copy of Lion onto your internal drive
7. When the installer asks if you have data to "migrate over", select your backup clone drive - the installer will bring over your accounts, apps, and other relevant data.
8. Now, boot from the new Lion OS, run Software Update.

Do it this way, and you'll have a fresh Lion installation _AND_ still have your exact previous Snow Leopard on the backup. You can experiment with Lion and make sure it's to your liking BEFORE you get rid of the old SL OS.

Is it possible to "clone back" the external clone of your system onto your internal drive? I mean, if you would decide to ditch Lion and go back to Snow Leopard, could you just duplicate your external Snow Leopard system onto the internal drive so you don't need to have your external to boot from?

I have had huge problems with Time Machine not backing up but still "pretending" to back up (it backs up every hour and says so, but nothing gets backed up in reality, tricky!).

 

[LED]

Is it possible to "clone back" the external clone of your system onto your internal drive? I mean, if you would decide to ditch Lion and go back to Snow Leopard, could you just duplicate your external Snow Leopard system onto the internal drive so you don't need to have your external to boot from?

I have had huge problems with Time Machine not backing up but still "pretending" to back up (it backs up every hour and says so, but nothing gets backed up in reality, tricky!).

Yes, you just clone the same way except the source and destination drives are in reverse.

 

[philipk]

In my opinion, you would be MUCH BETTER OFF if you ditched the Time Machine backup, and used CarbonCopyCloner to create a BOOTABLE CLONE of your internal drive instead.

Thanks for the heads up. I just downloaded it and it is doing the clone to a Firewire 800 drive.

Yes, I know Time Machine wasn't bootable. I figure I would reinstall Snow Leopard and then restore if I had a problem.

I was unaware of CCC. I will gladly donate $15 if it works for me.

I will consider the rest of your advice.

I like the idea of a clean install.

Thanks

 

[Kuray]

You can do clean install Lion

Because i have 2 hard drive in my MBP, I created partitions to install those things

Here is the list of Partitions
Files
iTunes
Backup
Mac OS X Snow Leopard Installation
Mac OS X Lion GM Installation
Clean Snow Leopard
Clean Lion GM

I will replace GM's and SSD's Installation when Lion become available

I have only one partition in SSD